Drinking and driving Niguelas style
While we were sat outside one of the bars yesterday helping Zak celebrate his birthday a couple of locals turned up on horses. Am happy to report that I have now stood at the bar next to someone wearing spurs and have (surreptitiously taken) photographic evidence to prove it.
Rawhide moment at the bar
Whilst I was impressed by the whole real cowboy thing, Joel was most impressed by the amount of poo a horse can do!
Zak opens his pressies
Yesterday was Zak’s second birthday. We can’t believe that two years have passed since he was born – it all seems to have gone very quickly. We celebrated by visiting a couple of local bars, then had a ‘party’ back at the house. Lisa improvised a pass the parcel and we eat hot-dogs in the garden. Zak didn’t seem to mind that the presents that we had bought him came from a really tacky shop run by a couple of Chinese people in the nearest town. Am sure the plastic watering can will fall to pieces within the week!
Having made a bow & arrow for Joel I thought it only fair that I showed him the traditional pastime of shooting arrows at small boys with apples on their heads. (I thought it was an English thing, but according to wikipedia its also a German / Danish / everyone else sort of legend).
Why the worried look?
Zak waves a tearful goodbye
Joel is still ‘getting the hang of’ said bow and arrow so I don’t think we’ll be changing the father / son roles over anytime soon.
The view from here
Mainly to make you jealous…. This is what I can see when I look up from the laptop screen. Significantly better than all of the views I’ve had from my desk before!!
Jims Olives take it easy for a month or two
Given the abundance of trees in the garden sporting black juicy looking olives, I have decided to cure a bunch of olives (is that the collective noun?) which should be ready in time for Xmas. Have found recipe for curing them which involves soaking in brine for weeks, with a little daily shake – then starting to taste after week 3 or so and then will marinate in something tasty. What I don’t understand about the whole business is how anyone worked it out in the first place…. If you’ve ever tasted an olive straight from the tree (and you really should try at least once in your life) you’ll know that they taste foul. The last one I tasted was so bitter that I spent the next 5 mins in a spasm of spitting and cursing. So prehistoric man must have tried one – hated it / spat etc then grunted to his mates that the shiny black things that looked good to eat actually taste like shit and they should go and hunt buffalo or something more rewarding. However, luckily one of them must have sat and thought…. hmmmm what if I popped those foul tasting bitter bombs in some salt water for a few weeks, then maybe marinated them for a while with some garlic, herbs and a little vinegar and oil – wonder what they’d taste like then? What a hero.
Tonight, after a lot of buggering around, I managed to deploy the first cut of the application to my web server. Its v. early days – right now all I’ve published is the basic look & feel, you can scroll around and zoom and thats about it.
What I’d really really appreciate is some feedback on…
For a reminder of what I’m trying to achieve (in the longer term) read this.
Thankyou
Man make fire - Man happy - Ug
It gets chilly when the sun goes down. I am mastering the v. manly art of making fire. Am starting to obsess about bringing logs in and drying them – have even attacked a few with an axe! (having noticed big correlation between starting size of log and relative ease of burning). Lisa is worried that I might start naming my logs.
Technology problems continue to plague us…. this time it was the magsafe connector for the macbook. For a while its been getting a bit dodgy where the cable connects to the connector – but it finally went a few days ago. With about 20 mins battery life left I managed to back up everything important… but where in Spain can you get a new macbook power cable?
Answer was pretty much nowhere without driving 100′s of miles and the post don’t deliver to the back of beyond where we are living.
Why dont Apple make them like this?
The satisfying glow of the power light
However, I managed to draw a very good (even if I say so myself) picture of a soldering iron, then armed with this and enough Spanish to order a beer I headed off to the Ferreteria (ironmonger – toolshop type of place) in the next village. Miraculously – after a bit of sniggering – the guy correctly interpreted my drawing and produced a soldering iron & solder – 7 euros later I was the proud owner.
So, with the aid of a penknife, my sparkly new soldering iron, some string and a clothes peg I have repaired the power cable. I’m not sure it will win any beauty prizes, but it will suffice until I can arrange to get a new cable.
Joel conquers a big rock
Since we’ve been in Niguelas, Joel has really enjoyed playing down by the little river – he’s getting quite good at doing stepping stones and building dams. Whilst its only a trickle it’s called the Rio Torrente – which is either a joke… or means that in spring when the snow on the Sierra melts it gets a bit more vicious!!
In the pic, Joel has climbed up a big rock by the river… shortly after taking this we sat together and watched the moon rise over the mountains – good boy + dad moment.
